I remember "back in the day" when the designers of high quality British compact 2-way monitors discovered something interesting. How their speakers actually sounded -- in the room.
They determined that the "average" listening room was not very large and definitely not acoustically treated. So, side reflections were a factor. The wide dispersion characteristics of those small mid/woofers were actually a detriment to sound quality. Taking the driver size up a notch, thus intentionally limiting dispersion actually produced more detail, focus and imaging in the average room than the smaller diameter drivers. Thus was born the next generation of polite British 2-way monitors.